The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley (18 page)

Before I have a chance to connect that thought to action, I hear Kite's voice. That low, running voice.

‘Cedar?'

‘Yeah?' I look up. I have a stone in my hand. He's grinning, not with his mouth but with his eyes. There's a large bag slung over his shoulder, which he's holding onto with both hands. He's wearing trackie daks and he looks messy and warm and entirely lovely. I feel like I'm going to do something stupid, something joyous and uncontrollable. In fact, even though it's only seconds, it seems like ages that we stay like this, with me crouched down and gazing up and taking in the look of him, like I'm taking in a big breath and it's making me dizzy.

He laughs, ‘So you've arrived!'

‘Yep.'

‘I'm glad.'

At this point in the conversation I drop the rock and stand up and all I can think is, Should I kiss him hello, or will he kiss me? Because that's how I'd imagined it should be. A big kiss and then a long hug, just like when some guy comes home and surprises his girlfriend who's waiting and waiting, sighing on a swinging chair. Just like in the movies. But, of course, this is not how it happens. Maybe it's because he's holding that big bag over his shoulder and he has no spare arms to hug me with, but we both stand there, smiling; neither of us moves closer.

He looks down at my head drawing and he says, ‘Rocks in your head?'

‘Opinions, actually.'

He shrugs. ‘Same thing I guess.'

‘Yeah.' I laugh, and sweep all the rocks away with my foot then I look up at him, and I'm trying to look happy and confident, which isn't how I feel, so I don't know what comes out on my face – maybe there's a battle in my eyes – but whatever it is it makes him drop his bag and come towards me and, as if I am a homesick child, he hugs me and says, ‘Hey, welcome to Albury, Cedar.'

‘Thanks,' I mumble into his shoulder, and I breathe in the smell of him, which is all hot and sweaty and familiar, and for a minute I do feel all emotional but I have no idea why, so I quickly pull away and change the subject.

‘Have you been training?'

‘Yeah. I must stink.' He gets a key from his pocket. ‘Let's go inside. Have you been waiting long?'

I shake my head as he opens the door and picks up his bag.

‘Dad will be home soon. He'll be happy to see you. Where's your stuff?'

I pick up my tiny bag of ‘stuff ' and he laughs.

‘You sure travel light.'

‘Kind of, but see I've got a lot of rocks in my head to carry as well.'

He smiles, and I wonder if he knows what I mean. After all, we haven't ever really talked about stuff like that: opinions and compassion and Buddhists and bigots. As we go inside, I wonder if we could.

Chapter 29

Albury is bigger than I imagined. In the main part of town there are lots of grand old brick buildings with awnings, like proud eyebrows, to shade the streets. You can tell that it's an old town, which makes it kind of stately. There's modern stuff too: big shopping malls and takeaway joints, and young blokes screeching around in panel vans with flames and loud engines. This makes you think it's not quite so stately. So you think one thing and then you think another, which means it's complex and that's how a city should be. It's bigger than your average country town because the town centre isn't just one main road like I thought it would be, it's lots of main streets with all kinds of traffic on them, almost like a city. And then the houses are mainly nice old weatherboards with big gardens, like the yellow house where Kite and Ruben live. I even begin to think Albury wouldn't be a bad place to live, if only it weren't so far away.

At dinner that first night, Ruben talks a lot about Albury and the circus. He says how it had made a huge difference to a country town, where usually there is very little opportunity for the arts to flourish. But here, because of the Flying Fruit Fly Circus, every kid has a chance to be introduced to the arts, or at least to get an idea about how beautiful the arts can be. Also, the great thing about traditional circus is that it's for people who don't fit in; you can be any shape and size, in fact, the less you conform the better.

‘Like Caramella and Oscar,' I say, and he says, ‘Exactly.' And then he tells me a story about a boy who reminded him of Oscar. He's tall and awkward, this boy, and he can't do any tumbling, couldn't even do a back flip, so he had a lot of trouble fitting in with the other boys who were all tumblers and jugglers. But he persevered. He took up spinning bowls and he practised and practised and, because of his character, which was obsessive and kind of sad, not only did he get very good at it but he was always picked for the main shows, as the kind of tragic, comic circus figure, and his performances were always very good. So his confidence grew and grew and soon all the boys wanted to learn spinning bowls too. He's left the circus now, but he's still performing, and the spinning bowls legacy remains.

The more Ruben talks about the circus the more excited I become, and my old opinion about the absolute necessity of me becoming a circus star quickly re-lodges itself in my head again and then I begin to grow nervous, especially as the conversation veers towards my impending audition. Ruben starts to fill me in.

‘There are actually two kinds of auditions going on. First there's a selection group of kids who do basic training on Saturdays. At the end of the year, those kids get to audition to become part of a training group. Once you are in a training group you join the circus, go to the circus school and begin full-time training. That's what Kite is in now.'

‘How many are in that?'

‘Somewhere between seventy and a hundred. But from that group there's another selection made for the show, so maybe forty kids, depending on what the show needs, will be chosen. That's what Kite will be auditioning for.'

‘And I will be auditioning for the training group?'

‘Yes. Now, because you're not part of the selection group, I've organised a private audition for you. That means the trainers will ask you to do certain things and judge whether you're up to the standard. Most kids here start training at the age of eight, so you'll be expected to be at the same level as the other kids who are your age and who have been training a lot longer, so it won't be easy, but its not impossible either.'

Ruben smiles, but maintains a serious tone. I can tell he doesn't want me to get my hopes up, and I can feel them sinking fast.

‘So, I don't have to do any special act.'

‘No, that's just for the training group. Kite might have been confused about that.'

I look at Kite. I'm thinking, All that time learning a skateboard trick for nothing.

Kite jumps in. ‘But Cedar's as good as Frankie and all those other girls,' he says, as if he can tell I'm losing hope.

‘Well, yes, her basic tumbling is and her natural ability might even be better, but what she doesn't have yet is the form, and she doesn't have a specialist skill.'

‘What's that?' I say.

‘Ah, form is just learning to point your toes and keep your legs straight. It's nothing,' says Kite, rolling his eyes, ‘we have to do bloody dance classes for form.'

Ruben laughs.

‘Kite's form isn't his strong point, either.'

‘What's a specialist skill?'

‘As well as learning basic skills, all kids have to specialise. It can be in trapeze or manipulation, or hoop or cloud swing, whatever you choose. Spinning bowls, even. But for you, I imagine some kind of aerials.'

‘What about tumbling?'

‘That's a basic skill. Everyone has to learn tumbling, even the jugglers.'

I feel my hopes unravelling and lying flat on a table like a dirty trampled-on ribbon.

Ruben looks at me like he's trying to loosen me up with his gaze, trying to get that ribbon flying. He says, ‘But Cedar, the thing is, what you
do
have is the right kind of determination and courage, and also a lot of raw potential. I'm sure the trainers will see that. You have to go in there knowing you've got a good chance. All you can do is give it your best shot. Okay?'

I sigh a big long sigh.

‘Okay.' I try to find my courage. Where does it go when your fear starts flooding in? It's like a little rock that's been submerged and you have to dive down deep to feel it sitting there.

Kite reaches over and squeezes my hand. ‘You'll be great. Don't worry.'

I look at him and then I think, I want to be great because I want him to believe I am. Will he still like me if I'm not?

Chapter 30

My audition is the next evening, after training finishes. I haven't actually told Kite and Ruben about the slightly enormous complication of my mum not wanting to move to Albury, or not even knowing I'm here at all, though by now she will know, since Barnaby was going to ring her for me. Boy, am I glad he's going to speak to her and not me. Sometimes a big brother is an excellent thing to have.

In the morning, Kite and I are standing in a slab of morning sun in the driveway, waiting for Ruben, who is going to drop Kite at school first and then take me to the circus. The circus kids have their own school, and different classes go off at different times of the day to do their training session. Kite says some kids also go and train after school.

‘Does everyone get sick of each other?'

‘Not really. It's more like one enormous family. Imagine having a family that big. It's great, really.' Kite's reaching into the apricot tree but I can see he's all lit up, eyes shining, because he has a huge family now. Makes me think how all his life he's never even had a brother or a sister, and I can imagine how exciting it must be to be surrounded now by hundreds of kids, all of them doing something so huge and exciting together. I smile at him and I take the apricot he offers me, but I feel my thoughts snaking around and hissing up because I want to be happy for him, I really do, but mostly I feel my own selfish fears rising up and getting ready to bite. He'll be swallowed up, I'm thinking, by that enormous, exciting, wonderful new family and will never again want to do dumb things like hedge walking in Brunswick with just me.

I sink my teeth into the apricot and I feel that opinion, the one that thinks, If I don't get in that circus family, too, my life will be over. I feel it growing harder and firmer, and now it begins to throb and beat through the whole of my body. I walk out onto the nature strip and I look up at the sky, which is confidently blue, and I try to breathe in its largeness, and while I am breathing Kite comes up behind me and for a moment I can just feel him standing close. I can almost feel the warmth from his skin. But then he moves beside me and throws a pip at the letterbox.

‘Hey, don't be nervous about the audition tonight. Dad was just saying all that because he wants to toughen you up. But the trainers are nice, they're all ex-Fruities themselves. You'll be fine.'

I imagine I am full of sky; I take a deep, quick, inconspicuous breath and act like I'm stretching my arms and then I just say in a ‘by the way, while I stretch my arms' kind of a way, ‘So what about your audition piece? I guess you can't use me, if I'm not in the same auditions. I guess you'll be using Lola after all.'

I want him to say of course he still wants to work with me, but at the same time I don't want him to know I want all that. I want to act like I'm not jealous and I'm not putting any pressure on. He's still looking straight ahead.

‘Yeah. I kind of had no choice in the end. 'Cause we've had to start rehearsing our pieces two weeks ago. So I had to work with Lola. It's a pity, but I couldn't help it.'

‘That's okay, I don't mind,' I say.

He looks at me as if he's trying to see if I do mind, so I stare down at the ground as if I'm looking at the stones. And just to be convincing, I bend down, pick one up and begin to turn it over in my hand. Luckily, Ruben comes out right then and hurries us into the car, because I don't think I could hide my disappointment if I had to speak.

Kite's in the back of the car, so we don't even look at each other all the way there. But by the time we drop Kite at the school I'm almost wishing I hadn't come. I stare sadly out the window and wonder if Kite loves me at all.

Ruben says, ‘I got a call from your mother.'

‘Oh.' I look down at my thin knees.

‘Last night,' says Ruben. ‘She just wanted to make sure you were all right.'

‘Ahh-huh.' I'm still looking at my knees and they haven't changed.

‘I told her you were fine.'

‘That's good.'

Ruben reaches out and rubs my head. ‘Little scamp!'

‘Was she mad?'

‘No. Just worried. She's all right, she says to say good luck.'

‘Really?' Now I turn towards him, eyes bulging. I can hardly believe it. All of a sudden I feel my ribbon flying. All of a sudden the sky inside me lifts up and spreads out and I feel lighter and lighter, as if I might just waft out the window. I didn't realise how much it was weighing me down, not having my mum behind me. Suddenly, I feel infinitely better. I look at Ruben and he looks at me, and between us there's a flash of knowing. He smiles because he knows I ran away but he understands why, and maybe he would have done the same thing once. I smile because I know somehow he would have made Mum understand that too.

‘Well, we're here,' he says, pulling into a small car park.

And there it is. A long, rectangular brick building painted white with bright red and orange and yellow strips of brick. At the top a sign which says:

THE FLY
i
NG FRU
i
T FLY C
i
RCUS

Instantly I am nervous again. It all seems so close, dangerously close. I close my eyes, I reach down into myself, I say, ‘Please, please let me join the circus.' I don't know who I'm asking. Just whatever it is out there that answers prayers. I know some people call it God, but because I'm unusual I might call it something else, like Janet, for instance. But right now I'm following Ruben inside, and I'm too excited to choose names for the Holy Spirit.